Why use portable apps?

Light weight. Portable applications do not require installation and therefore (normally) do not fill your registry with unnecessary junk. So one does not experience performance degradation when you add apps. Besides, portable apps are normally created to fit on USB drives so they are small and efficient.
Portable. Portability doesn’t only apply to USB drives, it also allows you to copy your apps between computers. So for instance, I keep all my portable apps in my d:\Portable folder and can easily copy that folder to other computers without needing to install the applications on the other computer. That way I can have my favorite apps on my home and work computer. By synching (see below) them up I am also able to keep all data related to the portable apps on both computers. Another nice thing about portable apps is that when you reinstall Windows or have a re-image as we often do at work, you do not need to download, install and configure your apps because they’re all self contained in your portable folder.

PStart application launcher

PStart is a simple tray tool to start user defined applications. PStart is itself a portable application and can be used to launch your portable apps similar to the Windows Start button. The nice thing about PStart is that if you copy it along with your portable apps to a USB key or other computer all the settings get copied as well. So it provides an easy way to launch your portable apps the same way on any computer.

Synchronizing portable applications between computers

I use SyncBack (look for the freeware download) for regular backups, but I also use it to synchronize my portable apps folders between computers. By scheduling a daily sync I have access to the same apps and data on my home and my work computer.

A nice side-effect of applications that are built to be portable is that they are normally not copy protected. Copy protection would defeat portability and as a result they are normally free.

To find out if an application is portable can be tricky and often an application may be promoted as portable but you need to find the right download because it’s default design isn’t. Typically a zip download (vs. exe) will be the portable one. I will try to indicate the portable version with each of the recommendations. All of the applications listed are free.

TrueCrypt
Free Open-Source Disk Encryption Software. TrueCrypt creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk. Essential software even for non-portable use. Read the traveller mode documentation to understand it’s portability. If you are saving personal information to a USB drive, this is a must.

Firefox
Mozilla Firefox – Portable Edition is a true portable application: it leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on, including all your bookmarks and extensions.

KeePass Password Safe
Keepass is the best password manager around and it’s free, open source, lightweight and extremely secure.

ClamWin Antivirus
I have previously posted about ClamWin antivirus. ClamWin Portable is the portable version of the application.

portaPuTTY SSH Client
PuTTY is the free SSH client that we all love. “portaPuTTY is a hacked version of PuTTY that stores all its information in files, not in the registry.”

GreatNews RSS Reader
Lean, clean and fast RSS reader.

µTorrent
A lightweight, yet full featured BitTorrent client.

Gaim Portable
The portable version of the popular IM client that supports AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber and Sametime (yes, even Sametime! ).

DeepBurner
CD and DVD burning application. To run DeepBurner Free Portable from your Flash drive, download it and then simply unzip onto your USB memory drive and run DeepBurner.exe.

VLC Media Player
A free, portable media player. Media players could be a p.i.t.a. so having it portable is a huge bonus.

FastStone Capture
FastStone Capture is a powerful, flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. Forget SnagIt, this is free, clean and portable!

NotePad++
Notepad++ is a free source code editor. It’s a great replacement for the default Notepad.

Nvu Web Authoring
Nvu is an easy to use Frontpage or DreamWeaver like application. Nvu Portable is just that.

FileZilla
FileZilla Portable is a portable FTP client so you can take your server list and settings with you.

7-Zip
Compression software for those situations where you don’t have access to WinZip.

HijackThis
A browser homepage hijackers detector and remover. An unpolished, but very powerful spyware detection app.

PStart
PStart is a tray tool to start user defined applications, especially for portable applications.

XAMPP Lite
XAMPP is an integrated server package of Apache, mySQL, PHP and phpMyAdmin (the AMPP in XAMPP) that all run from a removable drive. You can even make WorPress portable using XAMPP.

While not really a portable application, SyncBack deservers a special mention. SyncBack is a really good backup utility and is very useful for synching USB drives with local hard disks. It is not a freeware application, but they offer older versions (still very good) for free.